so it's all fiction anyway.(*)
i'll try to answer honestly and without sarcasm:
i haven't fully explored planet earth yet.
not even europe yet (where i live)!
i honestly don't see any reason to go further if there's so many places closer to me that make me want to go!


(*) i do love me some good sci-fi. currently: james s.a. corey - leviathan wakes
it is solar system scifi, so somewhat on topic.

Not only is that unlikely to be true, it may be irrelevant. We ALWAYS change our environment, and will certainly change the environment of other planets if we survive to travel to one.

Life support on this planet is limited. There will come a time, possibly soon, when human life can no longer survive on this planet. At some point after that the sun will pop over to the next stage of its life and all of the inner system will be cooked so that NO life will exist in this close neighborhood. By that time Humans will either have expanded our range to other systems, or will become extinct.

I would be very glad to be part of the expansion, not matter what the personal cost.

And that's why the "Mars One" project (among others/SpaceX) are spending millions (if not billions) of dollars on trying to send people to Mars??

FYI, I did not have any problems with your other responses, and do agree that it does not sound very appealing to live in a "dome".

Big picture, the response was obviously at: BW-userx where you quoted. But, overhead?

Wpeckham, let other life (perhaps) worry about the sun... we got nukes, opinions\conclusions and* wishes for that...

How appealing living in a dome is depends on several factors like size and transparency or even the ability to project images on the shell's surface. Size is a major factor determining if room can be assigned to agriculture for food and air and parks so our minds can "breathe" and we don't feel so homesick. Another factory is security and maintenance. If you know your odds of surviving chance accidents are similar or even better than on Earth that would matter greatly. Also there is the matter of companionship. It is hard for me to imagine more stimulating company than confidant, self-reliant, risk taker, explorers with a sense of place in History as noted below.

If you are stumbling around, feeling somewhat lost, at loose ends and in search of "The Meaning of Life" there it is in a nutshell. It is up to you to create that meaning.... or not. Life is risky and it is a risk we all ultimately lose. HOW we live and ultimately lose matters, at the very least to ourselves and family and sometimes, if we're lucky or particularly ambitious, it can matter to every living soul who follows whether they know it or not.

Yeah true, but I must admit, I do like the outdoors and would hate to be stuck inside a building of some kind, all day. And yeah, companionship would be vital, particularly in that kind of environment.

But, it would be hard to pass up the chance if I had the chance to explore a different planet. That's why I'd be torn between going or staying here, on this planet. Tough choice!

But then again, we may not have a choice one day, as wpeckham says.

But it would be different for different people, I guess.

I like the idea of a new society but the journey there sounds like my idea of hell -- I'm a commuter and the trains are bad enough. Just booked a trip under the chunnel and I had to go for a slightly more expensive seat to avoid sitting next to anyone.
I enjoy flying, mostly, but, again, the people put me off.

If you could talk to any person dead or alive-, whom would you choose?

The living one, of course. You must take me for an imbecile, or what.

(Citations: Rat, Pig).

i was merely replying to your own statement and the bold "could".
i did not imply that the mars one project is fiction, but the idea of being able to go and lead a normal life on mars currently is.

No, I would not bother even replying to you, if I thought that.

But, your previous reply seemed to suggest that there's no point in even trying to go to a different planet. Because you would enter the "unknown" (which you would be), so once again, what would be the point?

Well, I would contend that it's not only important to know what might be out there, just because it's the "unknown", it does not mean there's no point in exploring it.

Well ondoho, that's what it sounded like to me, but now we know were you stand, yes, it would not be a normal life. I agree with you. And it's a very good and valid point too.

I have a rather large number of friends from High School who, some 53 years later have never lived in any other town than the one in which they grew up. Some even live in the same homes into which they were born. I've lived in 16 cities or towns in four states, one nearly 2000 miles from where I went to High School. I know a few old classmates who have lived all over the globe. The responses to this poll are likely similarly proportioned. Human nature demands a large portion of humanity are settlers and a smaller one, explorers.

Entropy wins.

Eventually, everything will degenerate to disorder. Self destructive lifeforms like humans would be first candidates. No matter where they attempted to scurry to.

True but that would only be a concern if individual humans possessed lifespans measuring in many billions of years.

I have confidence humans will shorten that timeframe by several orders of magnitude.
Centuries - single figure maybe.

Good thing I'm not a pessimist.